


And we heal

by faeryenperatriza



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-15
Updated: 2018-02-15
Packaged: 2019-03-18 20:25:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,043
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13689183
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/faeryenperatriza/pseuds/faeryenperatriza
Summary: You learn to live with the ache that comes from being light years away from the other half of your soul. It fades, or seems to, pitted against the desert heat and the pangs of hunger, and one day soon, Rey thinks she’ll be able to ignore it.Soulmate AU where it hurts when you're too far from your soulmate.





	And we heal

**Author's Note:**

  * For [whathopewrites3](https://archiveofourown.org/users/whathopewrites3/gifts).



You learn to live with the ache that comes from being light years away from the other half of your soul. It fades, or seems to, pitted against the desert heat and the pangs of hunger, and one day soon, Rey thinks she’ll be able to ignore it. 

\---

Mornings are always rough, because they mean waking up, and waking up means no more dreaming, and no more dreaming means that once again, she’s alone. When Rey opens her eyes, it’s not even sunrise, but already she can feel the heat creeping out of the soil. Time to start her day. 

The sun’s crept past the midway point when she notices that she feels just a little lighter. She’s hanging from a rope in the carcass of ship, and for a moment, she thinks of climbing up the rest of the rope, just for fun. Just to see if she could. The whole of her body has lost the bone deep ache she’d learned to ignore, like some sort of tether in her blood has finally slacked. 

The lack of pain grew into a light fluffy feeling, like everything around her became gentler. She went about her day feeling like a young god, unshackled and free. That day, Rey enjoyed herself; she ran indulgently into the wrecks that she used to think were just a bit too craggy to be worth the effort of scaling, sprinted where she should have jogged. At sundown, she returned only reluctantly to her home, feeling better with every passing minute. The feeling crested in the night, and Rey stayed outside, taking of her boots to bury her toes in the sand and dragging her feet and arms across the flats in a funny half dance. The sand felt less like it was scouring her exposed skin, and more like the gentle scratch of short fingers against your own arm. She tossed her head up and looked at the stars, bright, bright, bright like she’d never noticed and laughed, spinning gently until she knocked into her door. She fell asleep half drunk on starlight, sand spilling in from the door she left open.

She woke up to the return of the tight pain in her bloodstream, constricting her whole body. It felt as though her skin was a size too small for her body, like all the heat of the midday sun was trying to contain itself in her fingertips. Rey had forgotten had much it ached, how awful it was to be so grounded, a tether anchored in her ribs pulled taut into the atmosphere. 

Rey jerked up into a sitting position, gasping for air that didn’t seem to reach her lungs. She felt her fingers scramble for purchase on the slightly sandy floor of her home, trying to focus on anything other than the intense weight that on her chest. She felt the grains behind her short fingernails, and concentrated. A deep breath in, hold. Slooooow release. In and hold. Release. After a few minutes she sits fully up, then curls into a ball, head down, her cheek resting on her knees. She lets her eyes stare into nothing, the world becoming a soft focus study of dark brown as she realized. Her soulmate had been so close. So close! They had to have felt it too, had to have known what it was, so why did they leave? 

She froze on that thought, because of course that’s what this pain meant. They left. They knew, they had to have known. And they left anyway.

Rey decided that today she didn’t really need to go out anyway.

\---

Jakku was a fucking nightmare, because of course it was. The rebel was barely useful, no one else in the tiny podunk village knew anymore than the banthashit elsewhere did and the droid with the actual physical useful information was lost somewhere in the desert. The stupid fucking desert. 

Stars, Kylo Ren thought, I’m gonna get a fucking headache. 

He did not, in fact, get a headache, but he did feel strangely worse as he boarded the ship. Some old injury acting up probably, or maybe he needed to eat. He couldn’t be getting sick, because what halfway decent Knight ever got sick? Though, he was achy all over, and tired. When did he start feeling so exhausted? He felt fine on Jakku, better than fine. 

Much better than fine.

Actually, he had felt extraordinary, now that he let himself think about it. His steps weren’t weighted by his gear, and his arm hadn’t even been sore, despite the number of forms he had drilled that morning. He hadn’t been in quite so much pain as he usually was, but he didn’t need the fuel- everything had come easy, the Force thrumming like it never had before-

The thought, the wrong thought, flickered in his head. Kylo’s eyes widened as he caught it, struck for a moment by the impossibility, the wonder-

No. He couldn’t. He grit his teeth and shook the idea from head. It could never happen. Would never happen. He would never have a soulmate. And he didn’t need one! He had all he needed with his teacher, with the First Order. He was fine being alone. Fine.

In the dark of his room, he looked at his helmet, turning it over in his hands. And in the back of his mind, the idea of another out there, just like him, burrowed just deep enough to stay. And for some reason, Kylo let it alone. I can claw it later, he mused. He inhaled deeply and turned his mind away, before he could finish the thought. 

Or someone else will do it for me.

\---

There was a moment, Rey thought, when she knew that they would die together, somehow. It didn’t really matter on which side they were in that moment, because they were the only side. She could hear the rain around them, Ach-To’s nightfall premature because of the cloudy sky, and felt her body breath easy. There was something in his nearness that made it excruciatingly clear that he was what made the aching ease. She stretched out her hand, and he moved to take it. And for the first time, the pain was gone.


End file.
